Microsoft stated that it was contemplating stopping support for SSL and TLS certifications that used the SHA1 hashing algorithm, after a strategy to do the same was formerly described by Mozilla. Google is currently contemplating joining those two firms and stopping Chrome’s support for SHA1 certifications at the center of next year also.

The inherent issue is that it’s become overly cost effective to generate forged certifications that use the SHA1 hashing algorithm. As computers get faster, of producing a deceitful certification, the cost goes down. Based on 2012 approximations, it was anticipated that offenders would have the ability to easily create such certifications by 2018. This decreasing price led all three browser sellers to intend to stop supporting any SHA1 securities and all SHA1 securities after January 1, 2017.

Newer approximations have brought the expense of certification fraud down farther still. Through using cloud services like Amazon’s EC2, the compute power to generate fake SHA1 certifications both is more accessible and costs less, such that SHA1 certifications are arguably dangerous already. This resulted in reconsideration of the 2017 schedule. Microsoft and Mozilla are considering bringing January 1, 2017, that date forwards, to July 1, 2016, so long as the impact in-the-wild isn’t overly serious.